16 responses so far ↓

• 1 Awad

  I bought this puppy a few days ago and have run it a few times to get a feel for the calibration qualities of the Sensor.

  Now let me say that I’ve tried it in a room with only modest light as well as a room with no other Ambient Light Source and both proved to be identical values so as long as it isn’t broad daylight with the blinds open it is pretty reliable.

  Let me add that the device is a Colorimeter which is for calibrating color and it is actually very good at it! Much better than you could eyeball regardless of who you are.

  So with all that said, let’s address some of the complaints, or should I say misconceptions with the device.

  1st, all the Device knows are absolutes that are pre-programmed into the software and it is designed to achieve accuracy within a certain degree (often lower than .05% Deviation) and your eyes will never be that accurate.

  2nd, Skin Tones Change based on the light source used and unfortunately Hollywood knows that the lighting creates atmosphere so the skin tones will never be 100% reliable in any movie; So let’s take the movie “The Guardian” for example this movie had no less than 7 different light sources depending on the scene and this would make calibrating your screen based on skin tones as tough a target as trying to pinpoint a Democrats Morals (After all, truth is relative right?). In Reality Skin tones can only truly be used to judge Calibration based on a Daylight Scene and ONLY if You Know the Skin Tone To Begin With.

  So if you’re going to judge the devices capabilities then you should use known quantities to judge. Good sources are Whites Lines, Known Black Items and Blue Skies or use a modern Animated Feature like Finding Nemo or Shrek where light temperature is never really a factor.

  Now as for Brightness and Contrast, these characteristics are designed to work within a defined range as well and the Colorimeter is doing what it’s told to do…

  Basically, the software measures the top value and the bottom value for each setting and then takes a few calculated readings from in between to determine range while setting the appropriate mid-point for Range. Keep in Mind, that isn’t arbitrary and as such the device will not know if part of a scene is too dark, it is just trying to keep everything operating within a certain range without letting parts of the scene get blown out (the more range your TV has the better this will work but at 700:1 or 1500:1 it will require some user intervention).

  My advice for setting up a TV, that is less than 2000:1 contrast ratio, with the SpyderTV is to go through the whole setup and then tweak the brightness and contrast with a THX Video Test from a Pixar Disk like Finding Nemo or using DVE for these settings.

  So, with all that said this device is every bit as accurate as higher priced calibration tools but does require a little bit of knowledge to operate properly within spec.

• 2 Ethridge

  The product has high potential. Unfortunately, tha same cannot be said for the company, Colorvision. The hardware would appear to work fine. The software is problematic:
  (1)it does NOT work with Vista
  (2)it does not load completely with XP Professional
  (3)the web site patches do NOT work
  (4)the web site is difficult to navigate to
  (5)Customer Service is TERRIBLE! unresponsive, indifferent, and if and when you do get a response it may have no relevance to your problem
  I returned the product out of frustration

• 3 Ice

  Colorvision STV100 Spyder TV Colormeter is a great piece of equipment.
  Easy to use and does the job.

• 4 Irving

  I bought this a couple of weeks ago. It is no longer available, but more importantly it does not work with Vista. Customer Support replied to my query simply by acknowledging that it doesn’t work with Vista and offering a 20% discount on Spyder3. At the very least, they should have suggested that I return the product for a refund.

• 5 Oeser

  The Colorvision STV100 is a good/great colorimeter. The trick is getting the right software which unfortunately is not included with the hardware. Instead of a robust set of software tools to do a proper calibration, the Spydertv package comes with just enough software support to do a very minor and basic adjustment. However, with the use of a product called “Color HCFR”, which is a FREE set of software tools, one can get fantastic DIY calibration results with the Spydertv colorimeter. Just head over to http://www.homecinema-fr.com to grab what you need. I still rate this as a 4 star package due to the fact you can still get a great calibration by downloading the free software.

• 6 Vanatter

  I have Comcast cable in Mass., and like another reviewer I was surprised how many channels including HD it picked up during channel search. More than any other TV or VCR in the house without a digital cable box.
  Small TVs often have trouble fitting speaker systems into the available space, but this one is fine. I have it in my bedroom and have not put the sound higher than 30% from the lowest setting, even when doing tasks like folding clothes and watching while my son uses the main TV for video games 20 feet away.
  Maybe more of an issue with my cable carrier than the TV, I have 2 or 3 locations for each channel, a regular a digital, and in some cases an HD. So I have to remove a lot of channels from the active list. The ‘regular’ ones have their titles like ‘Bravo’ and “TNT” but I have to add those names to the digital stations which are on some odd number like 75-2 but are the ones I want to keep.
  The TV permits custom labeling so I can add CH 55 for name of channel, I just wish the click to remove unwanted channels from the lineup was in the same menu as naming a channel, so I could make my lineup short and descriptive easily.
  It also permits a small menu of favorites, but the Fav key doesn’t toggle thru the list; one has to move one’s hand from the Fav button to the arrow buttons surrounding the circle.
  Laying in bed in the dark it would be handy to toggle thru 10 or 15 Fav channels by pressing one button over and over rather than blindly hunt for the arrow keys after hitting the Fav button, which times out before a newbie like me can find the right arrow. Maybe I’ll get faster.
  I too viewed several TVs at Best Buy prior to buying, and this one had better detail and color rendition than most of the others. I’m going to wall mount it one of these days. It is made with metric screw threads all over, but the TV comes with 4 screws in the mount holes because most US homes don’t have a stash of metric screws, a very customer-friendly thing to do.

• 7 Tea

  This was the perfect TV for my bedroom. The picture quality is great and I’ve had to problems with it.

• 8 Connolly

  Good picture, good sound quality, but slow response when changing channels . . . this television is a reasonably good buy.

• 9 Nestor

  Started looking for a television to replace an older model. Went to Best Buy to compare picture and sound quality side by side, and settled on this model. The ability to change the framing of the picture allows each individual to see what style they prefer, at the click of a button. The color quality is a true color representation, and again it is easy to change the brightness if you like. We chose to mount it on the wall, and with the thickness of just over an inch, it is not in the way when walking in front of it.

  Amazon had the best price, by $50 over Best Buy when we were looking, and we were well satisfied with the delivery. Ordered at 5:00 p.m. one day, and had received it by noon the following day.

  Would highly recommend this model to anyone.

• 10 Dominski

  Being used to a 40″ Samsung LCD 1040p I didn’t expect much from this small LCD at 720p, but I was surprised, and pleased. I would certainly recommend this LCD to anyone who needs a small TV for use in a kitchen, or other small room. Viewing is best at 6′ or less. But I am pleased.

• 11 Poe

  I am happy for this purcharse. It’s a beautifull TV. The sound is not good, but using a home teather it is great.

• 12 Egger

  I recently purchased this tv about 2 weeks ago. I had about a 1 and a half month long process of comparing/contrasting tv’s. I compared the samsung 40 inch a550 to this one. only big difference is contrast ratio. 30,000:1 (samsung) 15,000:1 (toshiba). as well as $80 price difference. I finally came to a final decision on the toshiba. I went to a local best buy and compared the toshiba to other top of the line lcd’s (sony, samsung). I virtually saw no difference in the picture. I also have my blu ray player hooked up via hdmi. COULD NOT BE HAPPIER!! the picture is awesome. my xbox 360 looks absolutely stunning as well. the reviews are true that the sound on this tv is not up to par. but not many lcd’s have great speakers because of the small size the speakers need to be to fit in tv. Which is why home theatre systems were invented, problem solved! I definetly recommend this tv to anyone looking to stay around th $700 range. its the best lcd you can purchase in this price range! I’d save yourself a $100 bucks or so and try out this toshiba! you will not be dissapointed!

• 13 Irvine

  This was my first HD TV of any kind. I really wanted something for long term without breaking the bank and with all the new 240Hz LCD cost became a real issue. I watched the the NBA finals and a good action movie on it and was very impressed with picture quality. The quality of the picture was very good just with the antenna getting the HD channels too. The TV was also very easy to set up, the menus are very intuitive for a novice. A few things that could be better, the built-in speakers are a little weak. Below the screen in the middle is a Toshiba sign that lights up when the TV is on but I did not find it to be too distracting even when watching in the dark, just wish it was not there. For the cost and what you are getting this is a great deal.

• 14 Urbach

  My TV arrived sooner than I expected and was very pleased.I always loved Toshiba as I do not get problems like with the other brands like Panasonic or Magnavox.Most of the TVs that I bought are Toshiba except when I was foolish to buy the Panasonic because it was a bargain price but lost the picture as soon as the warranty was over.Still have Toshiga from years back but gave away as I upgraded.The new one I bought replaced the Panasonic and am enjoying it so much more

• 15 Egge

  Bought this model after our sony kdl46s4100 went kaput within 4 days. 40″ is smaller than a 46″, but not by much. It has built-in features such as CineSpeed and DynoLight, which are supposed to make your movie viewing experience close to that in a cinema; but frankly, I don’t really know how much better these features have made a regular DVD any better than they already are (sorry, not bluRay yet).

  The TV tuner seems to be better than that of the Sony we had. We use a rabbit ear antenna with enhancement features, and this set has picked up three extra channels than the Sony did – albeit these additional channels are all religious channels that we don’t really care for.

  While HD signals are played beautifully, SD signals suffer from quite severe ghosting – that is, murky color spots would appear to be “fixed” at certain spots on the screen while the rest of the scene move. It may also have something to do with how SD images are rendered because we don’t notice this problem with HD signals.

  Not sure how much output power the speakers have. We only use the built-in speakers for TV and Wii; as for DVDs, we pipe the sound to a 5.1 with fiber optics. The mute button is a two-step mute. That is, the first click cuts the volume by half, and the second click completely silences it. nice or annoying, you be the judge.

  CNet review says this TV is not “digital TV certified” and I am not quite sure what they mean by that.

  The picture size features are badly named. While “native”, “full” and “4:3″ make sense, we have no idea what “Theatre 1″, “Theatre 2″, “Theatre 3″ and “Natural” actually mean. Just different types of zoom modes, I guess.

  What bothered me the most is how its PC (or VGA) port only displays up to 1050×768. If you want to get 1080p for your computer, you must get a DVI/HDMI cable (I got a 10′ cable from monoprice dot com for about 18 bucks). However, the default picture setting has over-set the saturation, so the green and red look as if they are going to melt the screen and burn my eyes out. I had to lower the color setting to lower the saturation. But quite frankly, 1080p is bit too small on the fonts (I know I can change the DPI, but I don’t want to), so I reverted back to 1050×768 (shhhh… don’t let my wife know that or she will yell at me for buying that DVI/HDMI cable for nothing).

  The remote control comes with the set is a universal remote and it looks fancy… but a lot of buttons are useless until you program it to replace all your other remotes… the buttons are not back-lit, but are actually glow-in-the-dark, so they are still difficult to use in the dark. Personally I prefer a simple remote with few buttons

  Its power saving (and screen saving) feature is not as good as I hoped. The TV does not turn off its back light quickly when there is no video signal; instead, it displays a jumping blue banner that says no signal detected, and I have not found out how long it takes to automatically shut off (or on standby).

  Overall I am very satisfied with this unit, and it is definitely worth the price.

• 16 Idle

  The Toshiba ST 5265 matches the 52hm95 perfectly. The only possible downfall I could find is, like others have mentioned, the side wings arent wood, or plastic, they’re actually made of some sort of hard foam material.

  People have made very positive comments on the set-up.

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